HR – THE NEED FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

By Ron Jones
HR Management & Workplace Relations Consultant
Written for Human Resources iQ

I have reflected on various events in communities across the UK, USA and Australia over recent months.

The specific circumstances of cause and effect in each situation will continue to be the source of continued debate and enquiry by politicians, academics and community leaders for some time to come.

Some years ago I did some work on school to work transition with a school community that was located in an area where there was the highest unemployment rate and highest suicide rate in the country. There were over 70 teachers at the school and only 1 lived within a 35 km radius of the school. As a consequence, students felt that no-one in the community really cared about them or their future.

I suspect that much of the recent violence we have witnessed in our communities comes from a lack of disconnection at a very fundamental level: would you throw a rock through the window of a business that a friend or family member worked in?

My approach therefore is to try and look beyond the cause and begin a discussion around what might be some useful actions that could be a way of building a new level of community engagement.

HR practitioners in many enterprises have always sought to highlight the credentials of their firm in contributing to social and community benefit: now we have a strong argument for building on this approach and developing a cohesive community engagement strategy.

In part this means knowing why we are part of a particular community: why is our retail outlet or production plant in that location. This requires our businesses and organisations to be able to justify their role and responsibilities within the very communities they help form by virtue of their very presence.

This then requires a commitment to, and investment in, building and re-creating local relationships.

Key components of this community engagement framework include:

• Building opportunities for staff to engage directly with local groups such as schools, arts and sporting organisations for example through volunteer work, promoting their activities, offering sponsorships
• Providing speakers for local community groups on topics such as careers, leadership, the role of the organisation, what value it provides to the local area, why it is located where it is, history and future plans etc
• Allowing schools and other community based organisations to undertake work experience programs, doing site visits
• Offering scholarships for talented locals to support their future career and personal development goals
• Advertising job vacancies in the local community before going broader – establishing a local jobs board with schools, education institutions, community groups in the area
• Involving local community organisations in the discussions about future opportunities
• Promoting/hosting local community events
• Providing mentors to build capability within the community.

Many of these types of activities are undertaken by most businesses to some degree already.

The focus now should be on using these as part of an overall and deliberate strategy designed to re-connect with local community goals and to be seen to be a part of the community rather than being seen as directly oppositional to it.

Building a strong sense of community within organisations will require HR to identify and promote some new values and competencies.

These will include:

• Developing motivation and a genuine desire to engage with local community members
• Identifying a focus based on outcomes – what does the business want to achieve by developing a level of community engagement
• Relationship and trust building – how will the business seek to build accessibility, consistency and continuity of contact
• Inclusiveness – the value of recognising and supporting diversity and the competencies of broader participation and communication
• Providing leadership within the community – demonstrating support for community issues through an articulated statement of values

HR can play a role in building these competencies within the business and actively seeking ways of using the community engagement framework as an active source of new talent.

The results may prove beneficial not only to the business but also to the local community.

WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY

From January 1, 2012, new Work Health and Safety laws will apply across all workplaces in Australia.

In many cases the new provisions reflect existing arrangements: however there is now an even stronger commitment by the regulatory authorities to ensuring compliance with national standards. Business will be expected to be able to demonstrate compliance through specific risk plans and other required documentation. Penalties for non-compliance are considerable.

Some essential elements of the new arrangements include:

• Responsibility within the business for identifying and consulting on risks and hazards
• Preparing a risk assessment for various hazards
• Ensuring that control mechanisms remain effective
• Keeping effective risk management records and documentation
• Demonstrating that Health and Safety policies are up to date
• Compliance and best practice requirements set out in a series of Codes of Practice:
• How to manage work health and safety risks
• How to consult on work health and safety
• Managing the work environment and facilities
• Managing noise and preventing hearing loss at work
• Hazardous manual tasks
• Confined spaces
• How to prevent falls at workplaces
• Labelling of workplace hazardous chemicals
• Preparation of safety data sheets for hazardous chemicals
• How to manage and control asbestos in the workplace
• How to safety remove asbestos, and
• Facilities for construction sites.

The new arrangements will also require businesses to engage in greater levels of consultation with suppliers and contractors to ensure that all risk areas have been adequately covered.

Having a strong commitment to a safety culture embedded across all areas of the business will contribute significantly to ensuring compliance with the new Work Health and Safety Laws.

For further information and advice, please contact me as below.

Ron Jones

Mobile: +61 427 273 283
Email: ron@rightworkadvice.com.au
Web: www.ronjonesconsulting.com.au
Mail: PO Box 1973 WEST PERTH WA 6872
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rightworkadvice

How Fair Does it Need to be?

By Ron Jones
HR Management & Workplace Relations Consultant

Much has been written recently on the need for improvements in the Fair Work Act 2009. The groundswell of opinion has been mounting for some time, and has intensified in recent weeks.

There may be a number of reasons for this: genuine concerns as to limitations of the Act; the build up of pressure for a review that must be conducted soon anyway; and the possibility of adding a further nail in the coffin of a Labor Government.

It must also be remembered that much of the bleating coming from various lobby groups is just sour grapes: bodies such as ACCI and the Australian Industry Group were heavily involved in the proceedings that led to the current system. They predominantly represent the interests of large corporations which have the resources to deal with the changes. To listen to them now, you would think they had been asleep for the last few years. Actually, they probably were if they failed to fully comprehend how the new system would play out. Such groups need to be careful to avoid an accusation that they are really only complaining now because they failed to advise their members how to deal with changes and how to defend themselves against the unions.

In my view, there is much to be applauded with the new modern award system: it has removed many of the problems of Work Choices and created a genuine attempt to build a stronger enterprise focus for workplace management.

However, there are areas where reform to the new modern award and individual flexibility arrangements is needed.

Some examples of areas of concern are: differences in implementing time and a half and double time for overtime; minimum times for employment of casual staff; clarity around when a casual ceases to be deemed a casual and what arrangements should be implemented when a casual is converted to part time or full time; transition arrangements from old awards; clarity as to the determination of award free status.

It is also important to recognise that the changes have had, and continue to have, a significant impact on many small to medium size businesses. Many business owners are struggling to fully comprehend the changes and what they need to do to ensure compliance. There is a real need for a moratorium on prosecutions until a full education campaign has been conducted.

How confident are you that your workplace meets the required standards?

By Ron Jones
HR Management & Workplace Relations Consultant

It is now 18 months since the commencement of the modern awards under the Fair Work Act and a lot has changed during that time.

It is more than likely that your payroll system has made the changes necessary to ensure staff are receiving the right pay and allowances.

Hopefully you have included redundancy entitlements in the conditions of employment offered to staff.

You will also have your staff on either a contract of employment which refers specifically to the award or you will have a negotiated enterprise agreement.

Your leave entitlements will also follow the National Employment Standards so that permanent and long term staff, including casuals, can obtain benefits for carer’s leave, community service leave and long service leave.

Of course, you will have also made sure that you don’t have any long term casual staff performing regular work.

And, your policies and procedures preclude the possibility of an adverse action or unfair dismissal claim against you.

The reason why all of these things will be in place is because you want to do the right thing as well as avoiding any possibility of being fined $33,000 each time you make a mistake.

Perhaps you are not sure if all of this is in place.

Just to be on the safe side it might be timely to have someone do a review and advise if there are any compliance issues.

You can help safeguard your organisation for just a small investment.

Please contact Ron Jones Consulting to discuss further.

ADVERSE ACTION – THIS IS REALLY SCARY!!

Adverse Action: The sleeping giant of the Fair Work Act is slowly waking up and will soon be terrorising SMEs everywhere!

Adverse action means that just when you think you’ve dealt with an employee and that a workplace problem has been finalised, it hasn’t.

Adverse action means that just when you think the termination for poor performance has been finalised, it hasn’t.

Adverse action means that just when you think you’ve selected your best candidate and that the recruitment process has now been finalised, it hasn’t.

Adverse action means that just when you think all your managers have been trained effectively in how to treat their staff, they haven’t.

In effect, adverse action can result from any situation where an employee has a workplace right and the exercise of that right is impacted in some way or other by decisions of the employer. More significantly, it can occur when decisions are made on behalf of the employer by staff who don’t fully understand the implications of their decision or have not adequately followed a process which led to the particular decision.

The Fair Work Act contains general protection provisions which state that an employer must not take any adverse action against an employee, or contractor or prospective employee or contractor, because that person has exercised or proposes to exercise a workplace right.

Workplace rights are very broad and include, for example, rights as a union member, the right to make complaints about their employment, the right to enquire about terms and conditions of employment, the right to request flexible work arrangements.

An action is adverse if it affects the employee adversely. Any reasonable or normal action taken by the employer in exercising their role, such as instituting performance management or disciplinary procedures, or implementing a work change, or refusing overtime or TOIL, could be adverse if the employee believes the action was taken because they were exercising a workplace right.

Some examples:

Recent cases heard by Fair Work Australia or dealt with in other jurisdictions have covered situations where managers failed to adequately train staff; where overtime was required without any additional payment; where termination resulted from union activities.

Adverse action claims can be lodged up to 6 years after the event! And the penalties are not limited to, for example, 6 month’s pay for an unfair dismissal. Each breach can result in fines of $33,000 for the organisation and $6,000 FOR INDIVIDUALS.

Oh, and an HR Manager who acts in a way that leads to the adverse action, can also be fined!

Protecting yourself from adverse action complaints requires a disciplined culture of HR and IR compliance: a culture that acknowledges and supports the role of the HR Manager in ensuring line managers adhere to policies and procedures; a culture that trains and supports managers in their decision making and which rewards them accordingly.

Policies and procedures need to be updated and enforced and record keeping needs to be maintained.

HR Managers will need to be especially diligent in ensuring the actions of managers do not lead to claims of adverse treatment: the penalties and consequences are too great.

Just a Million Strokes: Leadership vs Management

Written by Ron Jones for HRiQ

I had spent some time in recent weeks trying to really come to terms with the difference between leadership and management. I know that there are plenty of theoretical and research-based differences about roles, personality types and a range of other key components. What I was looking for was what we as HR practitioners could do to tangibly promote leadership.

And then I attended a presentation by Roz Savage.

For those of you who don’t know, Roz was the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean, having already conquered the Atlantic. In the next few days after her talk, she would set out to conquer the Indian Ocean.

During her presentation, she commented that the first leg of the Pacific was ”just a million strokes." I don’t pretend to know anything about what it is like to embark on such a journey, but it gave me a jolt to think that most of us are overawed by such large numbers and the challenge that this presents.

There was also another realization that struck me: most of us are really good at giving up on something when we don’t like it and then moving onto something else.

But if you’re in the middle of the Pacific, and you’ve only done 350,000 strokes, you can’t give up! Where else would you go? Savage’s journey meant making a huge commitment—and having made the commitment, being prepared to see it through to the end.

Most of us in the workplace get stuck at some point. We give up on the task we are doing and move to something else; we go home and complain about the boss, the work, or something else— although we don’t often complain about ourselves!

A million is a huge number of strokes! Imagine the prospect of waking up each day and repeating the same action 10,000 times before you go to sleep again, only to wake up and do the same thing over, and over, and over.

Savage spoke about what inspired her to make the first solo journey. It was very much a personal exploration – something which took her completely out of the comfort zone of everything that she had done and what she was doing at the time.

It occurred to me that one difference between leadership and management is that management occurs within our comfort zone; true leadership takes us outside of that zone.

Think about the people who most inspire us as leaders. They inspire us because they take that extra step, do something which is counter-intuitive or really put their own interests on the line.

Most of us in HR roles like to play it safe. We rarely step outside of our own comfort zones, and many of us just strive to effectively maintain the status quo in our organizations. We are hardly ever presented with a mandate to take ourselves outside of our defined role, and yet this is precisely what we need to do. We need to challenge many of the assumptions within the organizations we work in. We should constantly be looking for the organizational challenges which not only build our own leadership capacity, but which also provide opportunities for others.

How many of us set out to do our ‘million stroke journey’: to challenge ourselves so completely that we forget what our comfort zone is?

I don’t know what my threshold is. I do know that every now and again, the challenges in the workplace can create ideal experiences to learn more about myself – and if I know that, then perhaps I can use Roz Savage’s example to be more effective as a leader to others.

Building employee engagement

Written by
Ron Jones, Ron Jones Consulting
Workplace Management: Strategy & Advice

Almost every article on employee engagement refers to the importance of culture.

I have struggled at times with understanding how the culture of the organisation is really defined, since so much of it seems to come from the approach adopted by line managers. We constantly claim that ‘people join organisations, but leave managers’.

This suggests that the interpretation and practice of the corporate culture adopted by managers is a key determinant in the day to day experience of staff and how they describe the culture. The actions and behaviour of managers will influence each staff member’s description of the culture as they experience that behaviour.

My work with a wide range of organisations suggests that there are really 5 areas of influence which ultimately determine the level of engagement.

These are Purpose and Direction, Values and Behaviour, Consistent Treatment, Empathy and Responsiveness, Effective Communication.

For each manager, there is a fundamental need to build a level of confidence and trust with staff around their commitment to these areas of influence.

This will mean taking action to do the following:

Purpose and Direction - Be clear about the purpose and direction of the organisation
Managers should know what the business model is and how that impacts on the area they manage. Knowing how each component part of the business links to others is vital in creating a sense of involvement and excitement. All companies have a story about what they do, the name, their history: these should be told with passion.

Values and Behaviour - Be clear about the values and behaviours
Managers need to model and demonstrate behaviours that clearly associate them as having a strong values base which is aligned to the organisation’s core values and beliefs. The extent to which staff feel welcome and included is also a key outcome of the behaviour of managers.

Consistent Treatment - Be consistent in your treatment of staff
All treatment of staff should reflect the values and be capable of a test of consistency: this particularly applies to issues such as to the types of behaviour that are rewarded and those that are not.

Empathy and Responsiveness - Be engaged in the work issues that staff deal with or are concerned about
Managers need to enquire about what is happening and acknowledge and respond to the concerns of staff. Simple displays of recognition and communicating to staff about successes - and even failures – are important in demonstrating understanding and creating a strong sense of pride.

Effective Communication - Be open and authentic in your communication
Managers often need to be trained in how to be effective in their written and verbal communication. The ability to convey a message authentically is a vital feature of establishing and building trust.

There may be other equally important features of building and sustaining employee engagement, however these five areas have been the most significant in my experience.

The challenge within our organisations is to recognise their importance and establish the basis on which we appoint people demonstrating these characteristics into leadership roles.

Why Job Descriptions Matter

One of the challenges for HR is preparing job descriptions that are effective in addressing the strategic needs of the organization and linking this to the outcomes expected of any particular position.

Somehow we seem to have separated the job from the organization in such a way that we describe the focus of the organization in strategic terms but describe jobs by reference to the tasks they perform. Managers have clearly decided that the best way to control the workforce is to describe jobs in this way and this has been aided and assisted by HR departments.

Interestingly, of course, the position descriptor then becomes fairly useless as a reference point for performance development and management. Most people are capable of demonstrating that they can easily undertake the tasks in the position descriptor since these are usually set in such a way that they describe what the job used to do, not what it needs to do. Sadly, someone who can’t do the tasks assigned to them is probably not going to benefit from any performance development process.

Position descriptors need to be outcome focused and linked directly to the areas of accountability in a strategic or business plan.

I recently reviewed and rewrote a set of position descriptors for a large service sector organization that had used a very traditional task description system that categorized activities according to whether they were performed daily, weekly, monthly or occasionally, and the percentage of time to be spent on each task group.

Not surprisingly, this agency experienced a high degree of turnover from staff whose commitment and loyalty to the organization was affected by a high level of control and what they also perceived to be a lack of trust.

By changing the description of the roles to reflect the strategic nature of the position, and through developing a strong link between the successful achievement of position outcomes and organizational success, we were able to reduce turnover and improve morale.

This change was only possible because the CEO recognized the benefit of doing something different and being prepared to adopt a practical and relatively easy to use system. A similar approach has been adopted by another service sector organization and is being implemented within an expanding resource sector operation.

Every organization sets out to establish a performance culture and attempts to reinforce this through a management and development system.

We need to understand that when we recruit people or promote them, we are usually looking to match their capability and potential with the future needs of the organization. To limit this possibility by inappropriate job descriptions is to deny the organization – and the individual – of realizing the full impact of their talents and contribution.

HR owes both parties a better deal.

What do you think?

This article was written for Human Resources IQ.